Jeffrey F. Taffet - The United States and Latin America: A History with Documents

The United States and Latin America

The United States and Latin America presents a complex and dynamic view of the relationship between the United States and Latin America. Through a combination of targeted, thematic chapters and a range of freshly-translated documents, Jeffrey F. Taffet and Dustin Walcher illuminate the historical continuities and conflicts that have defined the vital relationship. Giving equal weight to Latin American and United States voices, this text provides an essential collection of primary sources for students and scholars, and is an indispensable touchstone for anyone interested in the recent history of the United States and Latin America.

Jeffrey F. Taffet is Professor of History at the US Merchant Marine Academy.

Dustin Walcher is Associate Professor of History and Political Science at Southern Oregon University.

A History with Documents

Jeffrey F. Taffet and Dustin Walcher

First published 2017
by Routledge
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and by Routledge
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Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business

2017 Taylor & Francis

The right of Jeffrey F. Taffet and Dustin Walcher to be identified as authors of this work has been asserted by them in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers.

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Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data
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ISBN: 978-1-138-82427-0 (hbk)
ISBN: 978-1-138-82428-7 (pbk)
ISBN: 978-1-315-74077-5 (ebk)

Typeset in Bembo
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Visit the companion website: www.routledge.com/cw/taffet

For Heather

For Cara and Leila

).

Jeffrey F. Taffet and Dustin Walcher would like to thank Eve Mayer, Theodore Meyer, Margo Irvin, Daniel Finaldi, Genevieve Aoki, and Kimberly Guinta at Routledge for their support of this text and hard work in moving it forward. Rebecca Dunn at CodeMantra was instrumental in the final stages of a very complex manuscript preparation effort, and we are thankful for her commitment to helping us get the book completed. We thank Fernando Purcell for his assistance in the early stages of the project, as well as our many colleagues, including Jim Siekmeier, Mike Schmidli, and Renata Keller, who offered advice and encouragement. Kelly Washbourne at Kent University connected us with four wonderful translators who trained with him. We also thank Michael McGovern, Katie Newton, Meredith Cannella, and William White, all Kent graduates, for producing elegant and thoughtful translations. We thank Nathan White, a student at Southern Oregon University, who helped track down documents and copyright permissions. Nadine Jacobson generously introduced us to Roger Zissu, who helped us with some timely advice on fair use statues. We also thank Sam and Jill Karliner, Veronica Barry, and Stephen Gold, who helped us get the images prepared. Finally, we thank Heather Taffet Gold, who read a draft manuscript and suggested ways to clarify our arguments.

Jeffrey F. Taffet thanks Shashi Kumar and Susan Comilang at the US Merchant Marine Academy for their help in securing research time and travel funding, and colleagues Jane Brickman, Jennifer Speelman, Patrick Speelman, Greg Sullivan, Melanie Ross, Rosanne Wasserman, Laury Magnus, and Paul Devlin for their support and advice through the writing process. As a faculty member at the US Merchant Marine Academy, I am an employee of the US federal government, and expected to note for the record that the views expressed in this work do not reflect those of the United States government or any of its agencies. At the Bland Library, Don Gill, Donna Selvaggio, and Marilyn Stern helped with research. At the New York Public Library, where I did much of my writing, Carolyn Broomhead and Melanie Locay assisted me in using the Wertheim and Allen Rooms. Mimi and Archer McCrudden, and their parents, generously opened up their home to me during my extended stay in Washington, DC, and Jennifer Hammer offered useful guidance on publication strategies early on. I used portions of this book in draft form with one independent study and two sections of students. I would like to thank Brian Gallagher and students in my two US-Latin American relations classes from spring 2015. Their feedback was helpful in the long editing process. I would also like to thank my family and friends who offered encouragement and understood my occasional absences. Im hopeful that my sons, Benjamin and Micah, might one day find this subject matter interesting; I thought about our effort as a way to advance their understanding of the world. Heather, my wife, to whom I dedicate my work, is the most wonderful partner, booster, role model, and critic a husband/historian/father could ask for.

Dustin Walcher thanks his colleagues in the Department of History & Political Science at Southern Oregon UniversityBob Harrison, Bill Hughes, Sean McEnroe, Gary Miller, Tom Paterson, Paul Pavlich, and the late Jay Mullenfor offering unwavering professional support. At the Hannon Library, Kate Cleland-Sipfle always provided prompt and helpful responses to my inquiries. All of my colleagues and friends on SOUs very much unofficial Inter-Departmental Collegiality Committee have afforded me friendship, distractions, and the occasional sounding board for my ideas. I thank the Department of History & Political Science for generously financing my travel to Washington, DC, and New York, as well as for providing additional funding for translations and copyrights. Most important, I thank my daughters, Cara and Leila, to whom I dedicate my work. Put simply, they constantly inspire me to strive to become better, and remind me of lifes most important things.

This text emerged from our belief in the value of exploring US-Latin American relationships over the long period from the nineteenth century to the contemporary moment. We are hopeful that studying this extended period will help students understand consistencies and trends in US-Latin American relationships over time, and to appreciate how and why change has occurred.

One of our initial concerns was that a focus among scholars on the Cold War era seemed to have placed the fight against communism at the center of analyses of US-Latin American relations. Yet we knew that the United States had also been deeply engaged in hemispheric issues before 1945, and remained involved after 1989, and that its policies during these other periods shared key similarities with its Cold Warera approaches. We believed that if there were substantive parallels over longer periods, focusing on communism and the Cold War with the Soviet Union was not an adequate way to explain the US-Latin American relationship.